Here’s an attempt at a far more in depth battle report. I played the game solo this evening trying out two new forces, the House Baronor force seen in the last post, and a new SolRad force almost completed (just the basing to finish off). I’ll post properly on these guys shortly. Here’s the battle:
The SolRad deployment. I think I was going for a denied flank, but it definitely did not work out that way.
House Baranor’s deployment is simple, two squads on the right, two on the left.
Turn 1 movement sees House Baranor on the right taking up defensive positions, while the SolRads move up, hoping to use their numbers to win the day in a close up assault.
Turn 1 movement for the SolRads.
Turn 1 movement on the right for House Baranor. This factory building always plays a key role in my games, I may need to move it for future battles. What I forgot, was that from the window in the top left here you can see straight through the church.
The centre SolRad squad is hit by a Plazooka blast from the factory building. Three casualties and a bad morale roll see this unit panicking.
My morale rules are stolen from Donald Featherstone. You roll a die for the unit multiplying its result by the number of survivors, you then do the same for casualties. If the men win the unit is fine, if the casualties do the unit panics. Here the SolRad unit just passes with a draw (red die for survivors, green for casualties).
One of the objectives I rolled for this game was ‘Extermination’. Meaning a force gains 1 objective point per five casualties they cause. Since in turn 1 House Baranor caused five, they score 1OP.
SolRad movement for turn two shakes things up a bit. With the centre unit panicked they pulled back to the hedge-line, and met up with their Captain’s squad stopping them from panicking. A machine gun squad takes up a good position in the building in the centre of the picture, and on the right you can see a squad carrying a Plazooka hugging the rocks.
House Baranor moves little, the only change is the machine gun squad climbing up to the windows in the building on the left of the picture.
Both sides start taking heavy losses, a Plazooka decimates the Baranor squad behind the hedge, and small arms fire kills a member of the squad in the building.
House Baranor retaliate causing four casualties to the squad behind the rocks and two in the building.
The machine gun squad here panics after only taking two casualties.
The plazooka squad also fails, although them more predictably.
But Baranor’s morale is also breaking down. Just so you know I theme my dice, green for Baranor, red for the SolRads. Which is why in this instance the morale roll was failed.
House Baranor are way ahead, killing almost double.
Turn 3 and 4 go by with little action. This is due to another of the games objectives, ‘Hard Hitters’. For this objective the first force to eliminate half of the enemy gains 3OP, and because the SolRads are nearing half casualties, they are now playing it cautiously, hoping to get close without taking many more losses. For turn three and four they do lots of hiding.
House Baranor stays put, because of its strong position.
Turn 5 and 6 sees the SolRads make a daring move for the Church, here they are in the distance, as seen by House Baranor troops in the factory.
This is where the movement ended, on turn 6. The SolRads make it inside the church, and the rest of the battle would be decided by the ensuing firefight.
The church is struck by machine gun fire, plazooka blasts, and small arms fire, and the squad taking refuge find death instead of salvation.
House Baranor also take heavy losses however, due to massed small arms fire coming from the church. Here their Captain’s squad is panicked.
The game ends with a decisive victory for House Baranor, but not without costing them a heavy toll. Scoring 5OP for extermination, and getting 3OP for Hard Hitters put them on 8OP total. The SolRads only managed 2OP for Extermination.
Some reflection and closing thoughts then, I think that the objective I rolled for didn’t allow for the best gaming experience. As it stands I have 6 objectives, and I roll for 3 out of those 6. In this particular game I rolled for 3 objectives which pushed killing over movement which encouraged House Baranor to take up positions and then just shoot. Once they were ahead in the killing stakes there was little incentive for them to do anything else. To make things more interesting I’m now dividing up the objectives into movement and target objectives, so there should always be incentive to move. With that said however, the rules I have so far do provide a solid, quick and fun experience, and I’m looking forward to ironing out more kinks with future play tests.
Deathzap 